Crash by JG Ballard

Described as a “crazed, morbid roundelay of dismemberment and sexual perversion” in its New York Times review—and, to be clear, the reviewer regarded that as a bad thing—the novel’s reception prefigured that of David Cronenberg’s film adaptation twenty-three years later. Ballard apparently had his manuscript returned to him with a note from a publisher’s reader still attached, advising against the book’s publication and asserting—much to the author’s wry delight—that he was “beyond psychiatric help.”

The film is currently available to stream on Tubi and also available on special blu ray editions put out by both Criterion and Arrow Films. Highly recommend checking out Jessica Kiang’s brillant essay too on the criterion website: ‘Crash: The Wreck of the Century’.

Cover illustration by Larry Rostant

Paperback

Published by Flamingo Books

1993 Reprint

£15